


Material radius

by faceofstone



Category: Twin Peaks
Genre: Brief Connections, Gen, Ghosts, Visitations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-24
Updated: 2018-12-24
Packaged: 2019-09-17 19:01:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 738
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16980033
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/faceofstone/pseuds/faceofstone
Summary: Local designated skeptic moonlights as reluctant Ebenezer Scrooge





	Material radius

**Author's Note:**

  * For [justnightvalethings](https://archiveofourown.org/users/justnightvalethings/gifts).



Three encounters. He wasn't a wiser man by the end, nor a better one. The ghosts, maybe, were a little less lonely.

 

1.

The apartment flickered back to life. The old incandescent bulb, the only spare Albert had got left when his living room's lamp gave up the ghost, gave a timid, warm glow that filled the room with new volumes and shadows. Two of them human. Albert froze, holding onto the fuse box. He knew one of them was Cooper before turning around. The apparition stood in a mournful, contrite silence, looking older than Albert had ever seen him, worn-out, tired. Right behind him, a beautiful woman in a black velvet dress held up her arm to keep a grasp on the light bulb.

“Speak… forward,” Coop said, syllables dripping out of his mouth like tar, and reached out toward Albert, hand open, shaking.

But Albert found out that he could not say anything at all.

“Too soon,” said the woman, and lowered her arm. The light bulb flared like a flame. Albert was alone in the house.

 

2.

“Not interested,” Albert said, head in his hands and glass half-empty on the counter beside him, as he heard someone pick the stool next to him.

“That's your problem,” replied the sugary voice of a young woman, barely in her twenties. Definitely not interested.

Albert turned around to face the annoyance, five quick retorts ready on his lips, hungover or not. But he knew that face. He'd seen her enigmatic smile in years and years of going back to a case that kept bleeding him out like an open wound. “You look exactly like…”

The girl who was or was not Laura Palmer shushed him with a finger on her lips and leaned on her stool.

“You got it all wrong, you know. Well, most of it.” She grabbed a bottle and refilled his glass. “There. It's full now.”

As a parting gift, she looked at him with a scorching compassion that made him sure that whatever it was that he'd gotten wrong, love was not part of it, never. Stamping a kiss on his bald forehead, she left him and disappeared among the crowd. 

Her platinum-blond hair reappeared under the pub's faint lights in the corner of the room. She walked up to a tall man in a black suit, dark hair slicked back like an old movie star. He smiled at her, full of affection. She whispered something in her companion's ear, they laughed and they were never there.

 

3.

There was nothing unnatural about the woman shuffling her feet next to him, lost in her thoughts as if she were trying to recreate the steps of a dance long forgotten. Classic beauty in her forties, curly dark hair, elegant red coat and shoes, the most striking thing about her was the hard slant in her frown, showing the coldness of someone who has gone through all of life's hardness on her own, no fucking thanks to the rest of the world. Which, damn, really narrowed it down - her life's story and that of about half the middle-aged women in America. Nothing unnatural about her at all if not for the fact that the street was deserted and she hadn't been there one moment earlier.

“And what are  _ you _ now, the Ghost of Christmas Couture?”

“Watch that spotlight, mister. If you want to play Scrooge so badly, why don't you go bother somebody else… I've got my own story to take care of, you know? And it just so happens that I'm lost and I'm late. Im late!”

“...for a very important date? There's a city map two blocks from here in that direction, hop along to your right and you'll make it in no time.”

The woman shook her head and made a quick and nervous gesture with her hand as if to try and erase that course of events. “No, no, no. What are you, new? I have no use for someone else's lousy map.” She raised a perfectly arched eyebrow, which he mirrored, unsure of what to make of that stranger. Points for moxie, one way or another. 

In confidence, she told him: “No-one can help you. Follow the music.”

“And don't forget to check who put the loudspeakers where, and why,” he confided back.

“You too.”

They exchanged a knowing nod, leaning into that haphazard connection, and, once again, they were alone.


End file.
